In supermarkets and grocery stores space in the produce department is usually at a premium. It is desirable to use as much of the space available as possible for the display of produce. However, certain facilities must be provided to the store's customers for efficient produce sales. One such facility is the provision of convenient produce bags that may be conveniently used by the customers to collect the produce that they wish to purchase. Ideally, the store would like to provide simple to use produce bag dispensers that are easy to maintain, hold a large quantity of bags of a sufficient size and which do not require frequent servicing. Grocery stores would like to use space for the produce bag dispensers that is not readily usable for the display of produce. It is most convenient to display produce on angled, substantially horizontal shelves. Vertical surfaces, such as the walls of display stands and shelves are good locations to position bag dispensers as such surfaces are not readily usable for produce display. Toward this end, some supermarket chains have developed standardized plastic bins that are installed into vertical and some horizontal surfaces. These bins are designed to accommodate a horizontal rod on which a large roll of produce bags is rotatably suspended. The present invention makes use of these standardized bins to make available a larger store of produce bags to the shopping customer.
A number of dispensing devices and produce bags have been designed to efficiently provide produce bags to shopping customers.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,591,405, issued to Daniels, discloses a wire frame plastic bag dispenser includes an angled lower bag roll support urging perforated, rolled plastic bags toward a bag roll restraining element attached to the frame. A constraining movement element prevents lateral movement of the bag roll. A perforation parting means separates bags as they are pulled from the roll. The bags may be folded along at least one vertical axis to form a more compact bag roll and may have a chisel cut in the perforation to aid in separation by the perforation parting means. The frame includes four corners each of approximately 90 degrees, has a C shape in a horizontal plane, and includes a dispensing end, a back end, and two sides. The lower bag roll support includes a proximal end attached to the back end and extends downwardly to a distal end. The perforation parting means may be located outwardly from the dispensing end of the frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,685,075, issued to Kannankeril is directed to a dispenser for serially dispensing plastic bags from a wound roll of plastic bags. The dispenser includes a support member which is attachable to a support surface, a pivotable arm that can pivot between a roll-loading position and bag-dispensing positions, a braking surface to prevent freewheeling, a mechanism to prevent axial movement of the roll of bags on the pivotable arm, and a tongue positioned to engage an opening between bags while the bags are dispensed. A dispensing system combines the dispenser with a roll of plastic bags having an axial passageway through the center of the roll. The dispenser can dispense a wound roll of bags that has a core or is coreless. The sides of the core can be flush with the sides of the roll of bags, can extend from the sides of the roll of bags, or can have a combination thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,446,811, issued to Wilfong, Jr. illustrates a pack of self-opening serially-arranged plastic bags of the “star-seal” type defining eight superimposed wall layers in the bag. Mounting tabs form a part of top portions of each of the eight layers and are positioned in superimposed positions and each includes an aperture for mounting the tabs on a tab retaining device of a rack in a non-front-side-free manner. Each of the tabs includes a mechanism for rendering the tab detachable and providing a predetermined detaching strength. In one embodiment, each of the tabs are detachable from the rack and in another embodiment, each of the tabs are detachable from the bag. A frangible bond is formed between the rear layer and the front layer of each successive bag in the pack. This frangible bond has a predetermined strength (1) which is greater than the predetermined detaching strength of two of the tabs and (2) is weaker than the predetermined detaching strength of the remaining six tabs to allow the leading bag of the pack (when pulled by a user for removal) to disengage from the pack, while (before disengagement) pulling the succeeding bag in the pack to cause detaching of the two leading of the tabs for self-opening of the succeeding bag.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0098600, published for Yeh, et al. disclose a streamlined folded T-shirt style produce bag includes: (a) a front panel, (b) a rear panel (c) two front gusset panels, (d) two rear gusset panels, (e) each front panel also joined to a respective one of the rear gusset panels at the second side edge; (f) each of the front and rear gusset panels being folded inwardly relative to the front and the rear panel; (g) the top edges of the front panel, the rear panel, the front gusset and the rear gusset panels terminating in a first perforation line, (h) an upper seam, said upper seam connecting the front panel, the rear panel, the front gusset panel and the rear gusset panels (i) the bottom edges of the front panel, the rear panel, the front gusset panels and the rear gusset panels terminating in a second perforation line, said second perforation line being perpendicular to the linear edges of the front and rear panels; (j) a lower seam, said lower seam connecting the front panel, the rear panel, the front gusset panels, and the rear gusset panels. The bags are folded inwardly from the first and second linear side edges, to establish a left fold area, a right fold area and a center area, with each of the left fold area, right fold area and center area having predetermined widths, wherein the sum of the left fold area width and the right fold area width is greater then the center area width.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,230,953, issued to Simhaee is directed to a plastic bag dispenser holds a continuous roll of bags, connected by perforated separation lines. The dispenser is provided with a tongue, which the bags are dispensed over, that engages the separation line between the bag at the end of the roll and the next bag. This begins the separation of the separation line, as well as holds the next bag behind the tongue. A finger is provided on the upstream side of the tongue, with a gap between the finger and tongue. As a bag is separated, a portion of the front edge of the next bag is held in the gap, holding the bag in position for the next user. The roll of bags rests in curved grooves in the dispenser that cause the roll to abut and frictionally engage an interior surface of the dispenser, preventing free-wheeling of the roll. The curvature of the grooves causes the component of force which creates the frictional engagement to increase as the size of the roll decreases.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,488,222, issued to West, et al. discloses a folded gusseted plastic bag has a first side gusset formed by first, second, and third longitudinal folds, a second side gusset formed by fourth, fifth, and sixth longitudinal folds, a seventh longitudinal fold being on a side of the bag containing the first, second, and third folds and forming a first folded bag flap, and an eighth longitudinal fold which is on a side of the bag containing the fourth, fifth, and sixth folds, the eighth fold forming a second folded bag flap. The folded gusseted bag also is folded into a total of at least eight contiguous plies. A roll of the folded, gusseted bags includes a continuous web of the folded, flattened bags joined along perforated severance lines. Preferably the perforated severance lines further comprise a centrally-located slit. The dispensing system utilizes the roll of folded-gusseted bags in combination with a dispenser comprising: (i) a support member for attachment to a support surface; (ii) a pair of guide channels carried by the support member for rotatably supporting the roll of plastic bags for rotation of the roll on the core; (iii) a tongue spaced apart from and carried by said support member in a predetermined position corresponding to the predetermined position of the slit in the tear line.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a compact system for dispensing plastic produce bags that can be removably installed in standardized plastic bins provided by grocery store owners. It is a further objective to provide such a system that can store an increased number of relatively large produce bags in the standardized bin. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide a dual dispenser system that will allow for a portion of the bag supply to be restocked while allowing all of the bags to be used prior to replacement of the bag rolls. It is yet a further objective to provide such a system that can be easily fabricated from existing dispenser components. Finally, it is an objective of the present invention to provide such a system that is durable, inexpensive and simple to service.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.